Thursday, March 24, 2011

Iron. It's not just for pumping anymore. (Get it? Pumping iron... like a body builder? Okay, I tried to spruce up the title a little... stretch with me here.)

So, this pregnancy has been going pretty well.  I'm not in (much) discomfort, I'm still pretty active, and I don't have perpetual morning sickness.  Win, win... WIN.

However.  I do seem to have low hemoglobin.  About 4 months ago, my doctor told me that I would need to take more iron for this. 

So after about a month of procrastination, I started to take more iron.

Two pills a day.  Followed by a pill each time that will take care of any *ahem* side effects of the two iron pills a day.

Now.  I'm also on thyroid medicine.  I take this each day.  Two (yes two) separate doses, alternate days.  Not confusing at all.

I have to take the thyroid meds one hour before or after eating and I have to take the iron at least four hours after taking the thyroid and I have two iron pills that I don't want to down at one time...  SO, I take my thyroid pill in the morning (and alternate between two different measurements) when I wake up, my iron and "other" pill during lunch, and the other iron and "other" pill at night with my pregnancy vitamin.  (You can only imagine the hijinks that ensue when I forget to take my thyroid in the morning.  It throws off my whole day.)

Also, between all of the bottles I would sometimes get a little confused as to which pill was taken when and one day I ended up taking my thyroid pill twice in one day and my iron not at all... and that's the first time I actually noticed I had taken the wrong pill.  Has it happened before?  I don't know.  So, now I have them all neatly stored in one of those days-of-the-week pill cases...

It's been working out okay.

But today I got this note from my doctor...

Kristina,
You passed your 1 hour glucose test. (YAY!  I was worried I would have to take the 3 hour test)
Your thyroid is normal. (Yay again!  That's great news!)
Your antibody screen was negative. (Woo hoo!  I don't remember what this was for, but negative usually means "good")
Your hemoglobin is slightly low, so you should take an extra iron pill daily. These are available over the counter. Wait, what?

Did you read that last part?  Yeah.  I did too.  I read it about 12 times... before I was able pick my jaw up off of the floor and resume normal breathing patterns.  My little days-of-the-week pill holder is starting to get a little bit crowded.

Oh, and when I called John to give him the exciting news (about my glucose and thyroid) he gave me some exciting news too.

Jake's been throwing up. 

He threw up on John, the carpet, the rug, the kitchen floor, and my red couch pillow (no, not the red couch pillow Katie cut open and spilled all of the little styrofoam beads out of... the other red pillow).  Poor baby.

I'm thinking we may need to borrow the carpet cleaner again.